Room For Improvement

After surviving the attempt by his own MPs to throw him out on his ear, Boris Johnson has been repeatedly talking up his successes since he took over from Theresa May in 2019 which seem pretty thin on the ground but when you actually look at what he promised and what he has delivered, they are even thinner.
The 50,000 more nurses and 6,000 more GPs is actually 24,295 more nurses and 1,147 more GP's and the promise to build 40 new hospitals stands at 1 but any usual definition of 'new hospital' but the Government have changed the definition to include any new clinical buildings or a new wing of an existing hospital or a major refurbishment.
The 20,000 more police is so far an extra 13,576 police officers recruited but those of us with long memories that they are replacing the 21,000 who they deemed 'surplus to requirements' previously.
300,000 new homes a year was 242,000 in 2019-20 and 216,000 in 2020-21 so not so hot there as the
former Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick told MPs: 'The government will miss their pledge by a country mile'.
His big pull for 52% of the nation was the promise to 'Get Brexit done' but as the Northern Ireland border rumbles on, the lack of trade deals leaving a 15% deficit in imports and exports and the severe worker shortages, it is hard to say that Brexit is done and dusted.
No rise in rates of income tax, National Insurance or VAT turned into a 1.25% rise in National Insurance and the largest rise in the tax burden since the 1940s.
As for Keep the triple lock for the state pension, that quickly became suspend the triple lock and just as quick to go was was the pledge to keep spending 0.7% spent on International Aid which went down to 0.5%
It wasn't a pledge but one of Boris's ofte repeated lines this week has been that under his leadership, the UK has the fastest growing economy in the G7 but according to the OECD, of the G20 nations, only Russia keeping us from being 20th in the economy growing league.
All in all, not great and although Boris has been proven to be untruthful, let's be charitable and mark his card as plenty of room for improvement.